I have to admit, I literally laugh out loud when I see people blaming Bush for the financial woes we're in. I've seen all the arguments from the "he left us in a recession" all the way to the "Clinton had a surplus" argument we've seen right in this thread.
Let's talk about that Clinton surplus. For starters, as it was pointed out, the budget surplus does not equate to being rid of the national debt. Yes, there was a slight reduction in the national debt during Clinton's years, but that's basically because after the Gulf War, he didn't do anything. 1995-2001 were some of the least eventful years in American history. Clinton's impeachment and the whole Lewinsky thing in general were about the biggest stories coming out of Washington. And when Bush took over in '01, things were looking to get even better. The national debt was dropping like a rock, and Bush even sent us all those checks for free money on top of that. We had more cash than we knew what to do with. Then 9/11 hit us.
And to give the Bush administration some credit, we did pretty good, despite the attacks. the spike in debt due to 9/11 and the war on terror was actually less steep than the spike created when we entered the Gulf War in '91, and we managed to even keep the debt from growing for several years right up to the end, when what I think of as 70 years of mistakes caught up to us.
People like to blame the recession on Bush. What they don't realize (aside from the fact that there have been 12 recessions since the Great depression, 7 of which have been as bad or worse than the current one), is that this recession is the direct result of a presidential administration but not the one they think, or the one you think I'm thinking of. It actually all stems back to FDR's New Deal. When FDR set up all these policies that he hoped would end the depression, he started us on a roller coaster that had to end sometime. Minimum wage, social security, welfare, they all sound like great ideas, but even back then the president knew they weren't sustainable. A bunch of these programs were actually supposed to be temporary because of that very reason, but the FDR made the mistake of assuming you can give a benefit to somebody and then expect them to be responsible enough to give it back on their own. As a result, over time we've been building and releasing steam, which eventually had to pop. With the much-needed spending during the Regan bush years, and the events of 9/11, the stage was set for a big burst. Then to make things worse, house flippers were buying houses and miraculously doubling their values overnight, and banks were not only unwisely agreeing to give loans for these artificially inflated house prices out to people with horrid credit, but they were also putting much of their companies behind these ridiculous loans. It was a perfect storm.
Economically speaking, I think Bush actually did better than people give him credit for. 9/11 and the housing burst were the two main factors that led us to where we sit, and they were enhanced by the underlying government problems stemming from outdated New Deal politics. None of it was anything that could have been avoided, no matter who was running the country. Bush just happened to be the guy in the big Chair as the world came tumbling down.
To answer the OP, I think there are two people in this world. The people who blame everything negative in the last decade on bush, and the intelligent, mature adults. Eventually people are bound to grow up, thus leaving the first group and entering the second :D Bush wasn't the greatest president, and he did make some gaffs, but he's not the loser liberalism is painting him as.
